Four takeaways from Conservative Conference

1) This conference was about boosting ‘Brand Rishi’...

Tory strategists have clearly decided that boosting ‘Brand Rishi’ is their best chance at the next election, as he continues to poll above his party.

All conferences are set-piece events to promote their leader to some extent - but this week in Manchester went even further, with many other ministers prevented from making major policy announcements in order that they could be revealed in Sunak’s speech. The most obvious example of this was cutting the northern leg of HS2, speculation about which dominated the conference, with ministers in every panel and interview claiming - to increasingly incredulous audiences - that no decision had been made.? As we know now from a video pre-recorded in Downing Street before the conference, this was not the case.

The objective of the conference was to reveal Rishi the person and what drives him - family, education, hard work and community.? The other objective was to perform a difficult reinvention, where the Prime Minister of a thirteen-year-old Government is presented as the ‘change’ candidate. The messaging around both cutting HS2 and on the more ‘pragmatic’ approach to Net Zero targets has explicitly been presenting Sunak as breaking with convention, telling hard truths and making difficult choices.?

Of course, the hardest truth of all - the broken planning system and housing market - was absent from his speech. Nonetheless, Sunak’s spinners hoping to present him as a break from the past were probably not unhappy with Cameron, Osborne, May and Johnson all lining up to criticise his policy shifts and their clear irritation that he was traducing their legacy.

2) …and about preparing battle lines against Labour

As possibly the last party conference before a general election, it was also intended to test some key battle lines and wedges against Labour.? Elaborating on Starmer’s “flip flop” approach to Europe, having campaigned for Corbyn to be Prime MInister, and implying that ‘Sir Keir’ is an Establishment type who won’t grip the tough problems.

Starmer has spent months trying to avoid the usual pitfalls of Labour election failures, such as worries about fiscal responsibility. Several of the Conservative announcements were designed to wrongfoot their opponents ahead of their conference next week, laying traps on spending commitments, culture war issues and various other thorny policy areas such as immigration.? Starmer has already been compelled to admit that he will not seek to reverse Rishi’s cancellation of the northern HS2 leg if he enters No10, and the Conservatives will try laying further traps between now and the election.

3) It gave an incoherent picture on party management, challenger posturing and policy positioning

Another major function of party conferences is to exercise authority and manage the party. On this metric it is difficult to judge how far Sunak succeeded.?

On the one hand he successfully compelled his ministers to dodge HS2 speculation for four absurd days, and ultimately managed to avoid the resignation of West Midland Mayor, Andy Street, after the cut was announced.

On the other, various challengers such as Braverman were clearly taking the opportunity to audition as his successor, while embittered former rivals such as Truss were openly allowed to rally members against him.

This mixed picture was also reflected in the Tory policy strategy, which seems to be an attempt to triangulate multiple groups at once, with the combination including:

i) popular technocratic sensibilism: gradually banning smoking, to the chagrin of the libertarian wing of his party.

ii) bold consensus breaking:? being up front that many Net Zero targets are unfeasible on current trajectories and with technology rollout constraints, and Rishi being honest about his assessment that the benefit-cost ratio of HS2 is beyond rescue.

iii) gentle conspiracism:? hitching the party’s pro-driver, anti-ULEZ position to eccentric online paranoia about ‘15 minute cities’.

Because of this kaleidoscopic picture in party management and policy positioning, there are a number of competing interpretations available to different political factions.

Among other depictions, Sunak has been portrayed as:

• a xenophobic culture warrior (despite being an ethnic minority himself and presiding over the largest influx of illegal immigration in history)
• an unimaginative technocrat (despite delivering furlough from scratch in weeks)
• a libertarian freemarketeer (despite overseeing a larger tax and spend programme as Chancellor than Gordon Brown)
• an authoritarian nanny-stater for banning tobacco (despite emphasising that the Government should not compel people to switch from boilers to heat pumps)

The next few weeks will see whether this contortionist act will pay off, and whether his party will rally behind him given the various factions who over the past few days have been touting immediate tax cuts.

4) We are waiting for results on business and the economy??

While many businesses are flocking to Liverpool next week - courting Labour for the first time in years - a number of corporate attendees remarked that the Conservatives had improved their business outreach. Particular praise was reserved Sunak’s new hire from Morgan Stanley, Franck Petitgas, who is leading business relations, but also for Jeremy Hunt, Andrew Griffith and Sunak himself.

The Conservatives seem finally to be upping their game in response to the lovebombing by Labour’s Rachel Reeves and Jonny Reynolds. Businesses may be encouraged that engagement is ramping up and that they can make headway by framing their asks in terms of supporting the Government’s core missions set out by Sunak in January and at conference.

One of Sunak’s core missions for this term was to get inflation under control, at which he has been making intermittent progress. Hunt has come under severe pressure from the party to deliver tax cuts which have not been fiscally deliverable in time for the Autumn Statement. Still, it is the conventional approach that governments make fiscal giveaways just before an election, so it is likely that they is keeping their powder dry for the March Budget.

Much of the next election rides on the public’s feelings about the economy, and the Conservatives have little more than a year left (at most) to show that they can deliver. Following Labour Conference next week, the major set pieces coming down the track are the King’s Speech on 7 November, and the Autumn Statement on 22 November.? By the end of next month, we should have a good idea of exactly how the Conservatives plan to prepare for the election with this Government’s remaining time.